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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437329">Kindred Spirit//Crumbling World</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/With_the_Wolves/pseuds/With_the_Wolves'>With_the_Wolves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stranger Danger Angst [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bad Poetry, Crushes, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Memory Alteration, Mentioned Not-Them Sasha James, Season/Series 03, and the silly things you do for them, i am not remotely a poet okay?, it has some fluffy bits but sasha is dead so you know, kind of, this is a sad one</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:35:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437329</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/With_the_Wolves/pseuds/With_the_Wolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"When the thing that wasn’t Sasha had mentioned her new boyfriend, it hadn’t seemed odd to Tim. He hadn’t felt jealous, or, or hurt. Why would he? He and Sasha weren’t that close. They were work friends, and that was all.</p>
<p>But—"</p>
<p>Tim knows that something existed between him and Sasha. He just doesn't quite remember what it was.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sasha James/Tim Stoker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stranger Danger Angst [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162307</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Kindred Spirit//Crumbling World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violette_Witch/gifts">Violette_Witch</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>TMA Valentine's Exchange gift for Violette_Witch (@bookish-bi-christian on tumblr)</p>
<p>&lt;3 &lt;3 &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="">
  <p></p>
  <div class="">
    <p>
      <em>In a windowless basement </em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>I look across my desk </em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>And your smile </em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>And your stupid hair </em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>And the golden rays of your eyes </em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Become my sun</em>
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>Tim stares at the poem for a long time. He’d found it on top of a little box he’d always known was in his desk, but hadn’t looked at for over a year now. It was full of cards with little notes from Sasha, printed-out photos of the two of them together. And this love poem.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>He remembers when Sasha gave him the poem. He’d just gotten back from a follow-up adventure that had taken him out of the Archives for a couple of days. It had been on his desk when he came back, and he’d read it, grinning the whole way as Sasha determinedly avoided eye contact.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>“Not a word!” she’d said when he’d opened his mouth to thank her for it. “I know it’s stupid and cheesy, I just—” her face had been fully red by this point. “I don’t know. I missed you.” </p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>He didn’t think it was cheesy. He’d been touched. Even as he teased Sasha about ‘the golden rays of his eyes’ for a week straight.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>He remembers that. </p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>But it doesn’t—</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>He doesn’t—</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>When the thing that wasn’t Sasha had mentioned her new boyfriend, it hadn’t seemed odd to Tim. He hadn’t felt jealous, or, or hurt. Why would he? He and Sasha weren’t that close. They were work friends, and that was all.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>But before that, Sasha had written him a love poem. She’d written him a love poem because he was gone for two days and she missed him. That evening, he remembers, they’d gone back to his place together and gotten wine drunk while watching The Princess Bride. That was Sasha’s favorite movie, which Tim <em>knows </em>because he’d gone through a whole phase of saying, “As you wish,” whenever Sasha made any request of him. Because what he really meant was—</p>
  </div>
  <div class="">
    <p>But— </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Tim starts taking everything else out of the box, spreading it across his desk. He starts with the cards, both of them written in Sasha’s messy cursive.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>First is the card Sasha had given him for his last birthday. The printed message says, “With Sympathy, to let you know that thoughts and prayers are with you in your time of sorrow.” The inside is crammed with her tiny script, paragraph after paragraph, hundreds of words. It was titled, “A Eulogy for 33.” On the other page, written much larger, “Long live 34! Love, Sasha.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’d taken him out to dinner, and when she’d given him the card, he’d insisted on reading the whole thing out loud, even as she’d complained. She was laughing, even as she said, “Tim, I <em>will </em>leave if you don’t stop it.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Tim stares at that “Love,” for a long time, trying to suss out any deeper meaning from it. Not such a strange thing to write on your friend’s birthday card. She’d cared about him, but he already knew that, didn’t he? The poem said as much.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He moves on to the other card, a Valentine’s day card. There’s a picture of three chickens on the front, and inside it says, “Hope you have a happy Val-HEN-tine’s day!” It was a tradition, between them, bad cards presented with exaggerated flourishes, signed with sickeningly pet names. Tim would sign his, “Your sweetest sugar,” and Sasha would write, “Love, your honeybee &lt;3”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>On the inside of this one, Sasha had simply written, “I love you Tim”. Serious and sincere. Tim tries to remember how he felt, reading it. He doesn’t remember finding it strange at all. It had just felt nice. Warm.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He turns his attention to the photos. None of them are polaroids, because of course they aren’t. But they are something. Memories. Evidence. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The first photo is from the yearly holiday party. Tim is wearing antlers. His arm is around Sasha, and she’s smiling. They’d gone to the party together. But they always went to the party together, and the photo isn’t especially recent. They hadn’t moved to the Archives yet.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Next is a photo of the two of them at a wedding. Tim can’t remember whose. Some distant cousin of Sasha’s. There had been a kitschy photo booth at the reception, and the two of them had taken far too long playing with the props before finally settling down for the photo. They’re wearing oversized sunglasses, a feather boa is looped around their shoulders. Tim had been Sasha’s date then, too. It had been normal for them, going together to parties and events.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The third photo shows them on their first day in the Archives. They’d taken lots of pictures that day, with Jon and Martin and the infamous dog, but this one is just the two of them. Sasha is hugging him from behind, chin resting on his shoulder. Close, because they were close. Best friends. And—</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The final is from a research mission they’d gone on together. Tim isn’t in it. It’s just Sasha, sitting on a bench at a bus stop. The sun is just beginning to set in the background, the sky turning from blue to white. He’d taken it because she looked beautiful, and he’d gotten it printed because—</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Because he loved her.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He had loved her. Every moment he’d spent with her, he had loved her. How could he have forgotten? He had loved her, and she’d been dead for more than a year now, and in all that time he hadn’t thought about it even once.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He looks at the poem again. Sasha had loved him, too.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He wonders what else he’s forgotten, what else that <em>thing </em>had turned his mind away from. Had there been something, between him and Sasha? That would make sense, wouldn’t it, if they’d loved each other? He doesn’t remember anything like that, but… he isn’t sure he trusts his memories, anymore.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The last thing in the box is a friendship bracelet, made from colorful embroidery thread. Sasha made it, during that first week in the Archives, when they were annoyed with Jon and took whatever chances they could to slack off. “Pink for you,” she’d said. “Green for me. And brown for both of us.” The colors clashed horribly, but Tim still liked the way they looked together. At the time, Tim’s hair had been pink (”your stupid hair,” Sasha’s poem had said). Sasha wore a green cardigan nearly every day. And both of their eyes were brown.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The thing that killed Sasha had blue eyes. How had Tim not noticed that?</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He picks up the bracelet, ties it around his wrist. Looking at it makes his heart seize up with grief for Sasha, for something he still doesn’t know how to name.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Good.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>***</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Tim has one tape of Sasha’s voice, and he listens to it, over and over, rewinding and rewinding. He listens to the cadence of their interactions, the closeness that had existed between them.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>On the tape, Tim jokes about them being love interests, and Sasha rebuffs him. Tim remembers this, remembers feeling—frustrated? Sad? No. This happened at the beginning of their time in the Archives, before the cards, before the poem,  but after countless nights out and nights in, parties spent paying attention to no one but each other, countless jokes and secrets and traumas shared between them.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He’d loved her.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And even as he listens to her laughing him off, he knows that she loved him.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There was more to it than this tape. <em>Something</em> existed between them, something precious, something wonderful, and he can’t—</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He can’t remember what it was.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>***</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Martin,” Tim says, cornering him in the break room one morning. It’s early, but Martin gets to work early, these days. Jon is gone, but what else is new?</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Christ,” Martin swears as he spins around, spilling a few drops of tea on the floor as he swerves. “You scared me. I didn’t think anyone else was here yet.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Tim shrugs. “I have a question. About Sasha.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I—Okay,” Martin says, sobering.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Do you—” Tim doesn’t know how to ask. It seems like such a trivial thing to be asking about. Sasha is dead, and none of them can remember her face or her voice, and Tim wants to know—what? If she had a crush on him? He twists the friendship bracelet on his wrist, steadies himself. “You were with us every day. Did you ever notice anything—romantic, between Sasha and me?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Not really,” Martin says.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Do you <em>know </em>that, or do you just think it?” Tim asks.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Martin blinks. “What? I—” and then he pauses, as he starts thinking about it. “Oh, that’s weird,” he says, after a moment.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>What?” Tim says, and his voice is too much, too desperate.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It—She—” Martin pauses, takes a deep breath. “It’s hard, thinking of specific events. My mind keeps kind of… sliding away. But I think we used to talk about you?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Office gossip?” Tim asks, raising an eyebrow.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“No, not—Sorry. That came out wrong,” Martin says. “Did—She wrote you a poem, didn’t she?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yes! You remember that? Hold on—” Tim turns and returns to his desk, grabbing the poem from where it still rests on top of the box. He hands it to Martin, who smiles softly as he reads it.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah, I—I helped with this,” Martin says. “She—she wanted advice to make it worse. Which—ouch, but… I knew she wasn’t trying to be mean, you know?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah,” Tim says softly. That was Sasha. Harsh without meaning to be, never quite thinking through the implications of her words. “Wait—she <em>wanted </em>it to be bad?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Martin nods. “She wanted you to laugh, and to tease her about it. I mean, that was basically your love language, wasn’t it?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Was it?” Tim asks.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Martin hesitates. “I think so?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Tim is silent for a long moment, staring at the poem. He twists the bracelet on his wrist again. “Were we a couple?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Maybe?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Maybe,” Tim repeats. “Jesus.” He sits down at the little table, frowning down at the plastic tabletop. How many times did he eat lunch here with her? “It took her face and her voice, and it can’t—I can’t let it take this. If there was something between us, I <em>have </em>to remember, but—” There’s nothing else he can do, is there? If these memories ever existed, they’re gone now. Stolen by the thing that killed her. He slams his hand against the table. “Damn it!” he says, blinking back tears in his eyes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I’m sorry, Tim,” Martin says, softly. Tim just shakes his head, and after a moment Martin leaves.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>***</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Two days later, Tim sneaks into the Archive early in the morning, and there’s a new tape sitting on his desk. For a long moment, he just stares at it, anger rising in his chest. Was it from Jon? Was Jon trying to contact him, trying to send him on some mission?</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>No, thanks.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He picks up the tape, planning to drop it in the trash. And then he sees the note underneath it. “Tim—Listen to this!” Martin’s name at the bottom. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Not creepy or foreboding at all, thanks Martin. Nevertheless, Tim relaxes a little. There’s a recorder on Martin’s desk, and Tim picks it up and pops the tape inside, leaning back in his chair.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The first few minutes are nothing but Martin, reading his poetry. Martin’s poems are fine, but Tim somehow doubts that’s all Martin wanted to show him. He keeps listening. And then—</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The creak of a door opening. “Goodnight, Martin!” It’s Sasha’s voice. Her real voice. Sasha.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“How hard is it to knock?” Martin says, sounding pissed. “You always knock when Jon is recording.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“That’s because Jon is my boss, recording actual work in his office. You’re in a storage closet.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“… Fair enough,” Martin sighs.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Speaking of Jon, are you going to make your move any time soon?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Wha—<em>no</em>!”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Boo, why not?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Putting aside the fact that he hates me, he’s also my boss.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It’s Jon. He doesn’t have any real authority down here and he knows it.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Still doesn’t fix the problem where he hates me, does it? What about Tim? Are you going to make <em>your </em>move soon?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Sasha hums. “I think I’m just going to leave it, actually.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Oh come on!”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I just… I kind of like what we have now? We’re best friends, we share everything with each other, and we go out and get drinks, and—and there’s no expectation involved. Or—no, that’s not the right word. It’s like—you know how friendship can’t really survive romance? There’s too much passion, too much give-and-take, too much change.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Sasha laughs then. “It sounds so unromantic, put like that,” she says. “Who wants a relationship without passion? But—It feels special. Like we’ve found a way to love each other, gently. Does that—that probably makes no sense, does it?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“No, I—I think I understand,” Martin says. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It’s like we’re teetering between being in a relationship and being best friends, and I feel like if either of us acknowledge it, we’ll be forced to choose, one way or another. And this wonderful thing between us will be destroyed.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Martin hums. “I kind of think you should talk to Tim about it anyway?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Sasha lets out a sigh. “Maybe I will,” she says, after a long moment.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And then the tape clicks off. Tim sniffs, wiping at freshly formed tears, and remembers.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>***</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There was this one night, the two of them laying in bed together, fingers intertwined between them.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>They were talking, softly because they were both on the verge of sleep. But Sasha kept making him laugh, and he was so happy. So happy that it didn’t quite fit inside him, so happy that he felt nearly weightless with it.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He brought her fingers up to his mouth, and she sighed softly next to him. And the unspoken thing between them felt so huge, so real, so all-encompassing.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Sasha James,” he whispered, his voice slurring slightly with sleepiness. “You are going to be the death of me.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“All according to plan,” she mumbled, rolling over to face him with a sly smile. “I have to earn my membership to the assassin’s guild somehow.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He returned her smile. And then he leaned in to kiss her, still holding her hand.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Are you happy?” she whispered against his lips. And that was a ridiculous question, because he couldn’t stop smiling. He could nearly cry with how happy he was.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yes,” he said, and he felt her smile in return.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Me too.”</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>@suttttton on tumblr if you wanna come say hi!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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